Latest news with #Irish-founded
Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Contract research firm hVIVO sees revenues decline 32%
Irish-founded contract research firm hVIVO has seen its revenue drop by 32% during the first half of the year to $24.2m (€28m), as the company faces headwinds with 'delayed contract conversion and a number of cancellations and postponements'. While the company has seen a decline in revenue, it said it was still in line with expectations of generating £47m for the full year. During the first half of 2024, the company generated £35.6m in revenue. The company said it had a weighted contracted orderbook of £40m as of the end of June. The company cash on hand stands at £23.3m. hVIVO is a full-service contract research organisation which is primarily focused on human challenge clinical trials. In a trading update, hVIVO said it was in advanced discussions regarding a number of major human clinical trial projects, some of which would represent the group's largest ever value contracts. It said it would update the market as significant new contracts were signed. However, some persistent macro and sector-specific headwinds remain, including a 'subdued biotech funding environment partly connected to uncertainties in the US'. The company added this was resulting in 'delayed contract conversion and a number of cancellations and postponements'. 'The board is confident that the issues affecting the sector are transitory rather than fundamental. As the market normalises, and biotech funding improves, hVIVO is strongly positioned to return to growth as the reputation and quality of hVIVO's services remains unchanged and well recognised in the industry,' the company said. Chief executive Dr Yamin Khan said while 'macroeconomic and sector-specific headwinds are still affecting contract conversions, we remain confident in the long-term growth trajectory of our services and the overall prospects for hVIVO'. 'I'm encouraged by the strength of our sales pipeline, with several major opportunities that could enhance the growth of our services. We believe that we are well-positioned to deliver growth in the financial year 2026, and we look forward to keeping shareholders updated on our progress."
Irish Post
2 days ago
- Business
- Irish Post
Laing O'Rourke wins contract for National Grid project in Wales
LAING O'ROURKE has won the contract to deliver a significant project for the National Grid in Wales. The Irish-founded firm, which is headquartered in London, has been appointed to deliver network upgrade works at Margam substation in Port Talbot, Wales for the national energy provider. 'We're proud to be part of the Margam Connection Project delivery team, continuing our partnership with National Grid,' Laing O'Rourke's Managing Director for its Europe hub, Peter Lyons, said. 'Through early collaboration, we have worked together on the design and implementation programme, National Grid has valued both our unique operating model and our technical expertise. 'This project is another fantastic example of how we're helping to deliver cleaner and more secure energy for the UK.' The Margram Connection Project will see the expansion of the existing Margam substation site with a new 275kV gas-insulated substation. 'Our Margam Connection Project will help deliver a cleaner, more secure energy future for South Wales, while supporting sustainable growth in one of the region's key industries,' Richard Gott, project director at National Grid Electricity Transmission, said. Across Wales and England, National Grid is planning £35bn of investment in its transmission network between 2026 to 2031 to connect new clean power sources. See More: Contract, Laing O'Rourke, Wales
Business Insider
08-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
General Catalyst gave a legal tech startup $75 million to go company shopping. It just made its first purchase.
Eudia, a fast-growing legal startup, has agreed to buy Irish-founded alternative legal services provider Johnson Hana. The terms of the deal are undisclosed. This is Eudia's first acquisition. Its artificial intelligence platform helps corporate legal teams handle routine matters. It ultimately wants to build a network of "AI-augmented" legal professionals who perform work for clients, particularly large enterprises, at a lower cost than Big Law rates. "We believe AI is the future of labor," said Omar Haroun, a former lawyer and Eudia's founder and chief executive. "Not in a dystopian way, but more augmented humans who are ready to completely change the work that's being done." Founded just under two years ago, Eudia already tops $10 million in annual recurring revenue across dozens of clients and, Haroun said, is on track to hit $20 million by the end of the year. Eudia launched with a bang. The startup emerged from stealth in February with $105 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst, one of the most powerful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. The investment had just one major condition: Eudia would get $30 million up front and the other $75 million as it found other companies to buy. A different kind of investment The arrangement flips the script on the old corporate development playbook. Typically, young startups raise small amounts of venture capital to keep the lights on while they crank on building and selling a product, and then they raise bigger rounds of funding as their revenue scales. They might direct some of that investment toward buying other companies — to access new markets, secure talent, or take out a competitor. Eudia benefits from a different strategy taking hold in startup land. General Catalyst is one of an increasing number of venture firms role-playing as private equity. The firm and others have been buying mature businesses or consolidating multiple competitors into a single company. The merged company can operate more efficiently by combining costs or applying technology to automate tasks and make more informed decisions. In Eudia's case, General Catalyst trusted a battle-tested founder with its cash. Before Eudia, Haroun started a company focused on surfacing sensitive information within large datasets, which proved particularly relevant in legal contexts. In 2021, he sold it to Relativity, a leader in the e-discovery market. Haroun founded Eudia on the belief that legal teams deserve better than what most white-shoe law firms offer. Traditionally, companies would save their thorniest matters for their outside counsel to solve, Haroun said, but as the demands on legal teams have increased, they've sent more work (and money) out the door. Eudia aims to help clients perform more work in-house. Its platform ingests everything from existing contracts, policies, and playbooks to past precedents and billing data to build a centralized "legal brain" for each customer. From that foundation, custom agents — software that can carry out tasks autonomously — speed up tasks like manually redlining contracts and running compliance checks. With its recent acquisition of Johnson Hana, Eudia can offer hands-on support for more complex matters. Clients can now rely on Eudia's growing team of legal professionals to handle issues they once outsourced to law firms or guide them through the platform step-by-step. Haroun said more details about integrating Johnson Hana, including brand strategy, would be announced in September at the Augmented Intelligence Summit, Eudia's invite-only gathering of legal leaders. Eudia screened nearly a hundred potential partners before, Haroun said, choosing Johnson Hana for its sterling reputation and blue-chip client roster. Johnson Hana already handles legal work for Airbnb, X, OpenAI, Stripe, and Citibank, said Dan Fox, the company's cofounder and chief executive. "I remember when I first met the guys, 'I was super clear: I'm not super animated about the idea of simply replacing lawyers,'" Fox said. Neither were Eudia's founders, he explained. "This is a business model that looks to make lawyers better," Fox said.
Irish Examiner
03-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Cork-headquartered Adapt IT acquired by Ekco
Cork-headquartered Adapt IT has been acquired by managed service provider Ekco. The new deal, which marks Ekco's sixth acquisition in two years, brings its total acquisition investment to €57m in that period. Operating for more than 20 years, Adapt IT employs 37 people at its Cork headquarters and specialises in SME services. Its 300-strong customer base operates in industries such as manufacturing, retail, hospitality, legal, and finance. The acquisition of Adapt IT brings Ekco's global headcount to more than 1,000 employees and adds a seventh Irish location to its growing regional network. In addition to its three sites in Dublin, Ekco now operates in Cork, Waterford, and Laois, as well as across the UK, Netherlands, South Africa, and Malaysia. The deal is the latest in Ekco's wider acquisition strategy for growth and brings the total number of businesses acquired by Ekco in the last two years to six. Earlier this year, the company announced the purchase of Predatech, a UK-based cybersecurity consultancy. In 2024, it added UK legal IT specialist CTS to its portfolio of companies. The year before saw the additions of MSPs Radius and Bluecube, as well as cloud migration and cybersecurity specialist iSystems. Cian Prendergast, CEO at Ekco MSP, said: 'The acquisition of Adapt IT is the latest move in our aggressive expansion strategy which targets key acquisitions combined with sustained business growth. "This strategy reflects an investment in innovation that will make us in Ekco, and our acquired companies, stronger as a result. We're building a modern, security-first MSP that helps ambitious businesses to operate with confidence and resilience." John Levis, Managing Director at Adapt IT, said: 'We are delighted to join the Ekco group, an Irish-founded business which is on an impressive growth trajectory. This will enable us to continue to deliver top-tier services to businesses, backed up by the skills and resources of a larger group.
Irish Examiner
19-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Irish companies are making waves in the global fintech space
Ireland is cementing its status as a strategic hub for global financial technology innovation, with home-grown companies such as Stripe, Fenergo and TransferMate leading the way. As financial services evolve at lightning speed, the Republic has quietly become one of the world's most influential fintech hubs. From payment infrastructure to compliance automation, Irish-founded companies are building the financial tools that power global commerce. Financial technology – or fintech – is the use of innovative technology to transform financial services, from payments and lending to compliance and wealth management. 'It helps blend financial expertise with digital agility to deliver faster, more accessible, and more customer-centric services,' says Fidelma Clarke, partner and payments sector lead for EY Financial Services Ireland The State's fintech ecosystem is thriving for three main reasons, says Clarke: it has a globally connected financial sector, a tech-literate workforce and a progressive regulatory environment. 'It's home to more than 250 indigenous fintech companies and is the European base for big global players such as Stripe, Square, MasterCard and PayPal. Fidelma Clarke Partner and Payments Sector Lead for EY Financial Services Ireland. 'In addition, Ireland's Common Law framework and EU market access make it a strategic choice for firms scaling across Europe. The Central Bank of Ireland has also increased its fintech-specific supervisory engagement, most recently through the Innovation Hub initiative.' Clarke says several Irish fintechs have emerged as global players, including Stripe, cofounded by Patrick and John Collison. It is now valued at $65 billion and operates in more than 40 countries, offering payments infrastructure for businesses of all sizes. Fenergo, meanwhile, is a Dublin-based regtech firm that counts BNP Paribas, Santander and ANZ among its clients and supports more than 80 global financial institutions; TransferMate, headquartered in Kilkenny, facilitates cross-border payments in more than 160 countries and partners with firms such as SAP Concur, Wells Fargo, and Allianz; and Global Shares, a Cork-based equity management platform, was acquired by JP Morgan in 2022, signalling strong global demand for its solutions. 'Alongside Ireland-born fintechs, global players like Revolut have also chosen Ireland as a strategic base, reinforcing the country's status as a gateway to the EU fintech market.' The success of these firms stems from their having identified critical industry pain points – from fragmented compliance processes to inefficient cross-border transfers – and built scalable, enterprise-grade technology to solve them, says Clarke. 'For example, Fenergo co-created its platform with a consortium of banks to ensure immediate fit-for-purpose adoption. TransferMate built a proprietary global payments network, bypassing traditional banking rails. Stripe became the 'developer-first' solution for online commerce – now used by Amazon, Shopify, and Salesforce. 'Their success stems from building trusted infrastructure in developing customer-facing products.' The Republic's fintech sector isn't just driven by individual successes; its strength lies in its ecosystem, says Clarke. 'Cross-sector collaboration has been key: initiatives such as the Grand Canal Innovation District, the Fintech Corridor (linking Dublin and Belfast) and Dogpatch Labs' NDRC accelerator have helped create a thriving pipeline of early-stage innovation,' she says. 'Policy alignment is also encouraging, as both ECB president [Christine] Lagarde and European Commission president [Ursula] von der Leyen have called for a targeted, risk-based simplification of EU regulation to support innovation. This presents a leadership opportunity for Ireland to champion innovation while preserving trust and market integrity.' This opportunity has been recognised by Irish governments, with digital finance included as a key theme in the first Finance Strategy Action Plan in 2018, in 2023 and in the most recent Action Plan for 2024, which contained a commitment to assessing the merits and feasibility of establishing a National Fintech Hub, Clarke adds. We are seeing Ireland's fintech leaders moving up the value chain and making an increasing impact on the shape of the financial services sector, she says. 'Crucially, these firms are not just solving for today, they're anticipating the next evolution of financial infrastructure, from tokenisation to cross-border regulatory convergence. 'Stripe is investing in embedded lending, identity services and AI-powered fraud prevention. TransferMate is expanding into treasury services and integrating with ERP platforms like Oracle NetSuite. Fenergo is applying AI to automate anti-money laundering and client onboarding workflows.'
